


Countdown

by stellarbisexual



Category: IT (2017), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Comedian Richie, Limo Driver Eddie, M/M, New Year's Eve, New York City, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-27
Updated: 2018-08-27
Packaged: 2019-07-03 03:23:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15810309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stellarbisexual/pseuds/stellarbisexual
Summary: On New Year’s Eve in 2012, Eddie and Richie run into each other unexpectedly in New York City.





	Countdown

**Author's Note:**

  * For [WaxAgent](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WaxAgent/gifts).



> The bizarre thing about this fic is that I started writing it before casting rumors started flying for Chapter Two–and the unnamed redheaded Oscar nominee mentioned ultimately ended up being cast as Beverly.

There’s a little flutter in Eddie’s stomach as he slips into his driver’s uniform for the first time in months.  With most of his best drivers away for the holidays, he’s charged himself with picking up none other than an Academy Award nominee and driving her to some fancy party in Hell’s Kitchen.   **  
**

In less than four hours, it’ll be 2013.

The truly crazy part is that he’s actually sort of friends with said Academy Award nominee.  She’s a regular.  In fact, pretty much every high profile or wealthy or famous person who comes to the New York City area regularly is a regular.  He’s somehow become to go-to guy for luxury driving.  It doesn’t feel real sometimes.  Okay, most of the time.

It had never been his intention to be this successful; he’d been blindsided by it.

He’d never expected to be good at driving, either, let alone love it as much as he does.  But after finally getting his license at the ripe old age of twenty-three, he’d discovered that for him, it’s like a complicated, ongoing puzzle–at least in New York.  Calculating ETAs and predicting the behavior of total strangers, weaving with precision.  It isn’t unlike the many video games he’d spent hours stuffing quarters into and failing miserably as a kid.  

Actually, it isn’t unlike simply walking through his hometown as a kid, he thinks as he passes through the Battery Tunnel, then blanches under the stripes of intermittent orange lights.   _What a strange thought._

He’s glad for the company when he finally arrives at his passenger’s hotel, her intense yet kind eyes and curtain of red hair familiar and comforting as he spends the majority of their ride going way out of his way to avoid the insanity of Times Square and trying to not hit intoxicated pedestrians.  They move at a snail’s pace, for which he apologizes profusely, but she laughs and says she’s in no rush and she expected no less on New Year’s Eve.

When they finally inch up to Penthouse 45, her pale, elegant hand curls over the side of the leather driver’s seat.  “You should come up,” she says, already knowing he has no other clients lined up for the night.  

Eddie thinks briefly of his other options and decides  _why not_ , that flutter flitting around his stomach again, and follows her into the building with his hands stuffed into his pockets, feeling a little silly in his uniform, even though it’s nothing more than a simple black suit.  

She must notice him fretting in the elevator.  “You’ll be _fine_.”

To her credit, she sticks by him at the party, at least for the first hour.  Eddie wonders if she’d actually invited him up as protection or as a buffer, if she’s here out of obligation but genuinely doesn’t want to schmooze tonight.  She knows he isn’t impressed by any of these people, not at this point in his career, not after some of the crazy shit he’s seen take place in the backseat of some of his cars.   _They’re all just people_  is what Eddie often says when people ooh and ahh over what he does for a living, adding _incredibly lonely people_  silently.

Out of the fifty or sixty people in this room, there are only a few Eddie’s never driven, one of whom is holding court right smack in the middle of a throng by the bar: an incredibly tall guy about his age with dark hair, an easy smile, and crinkles at the corners of his eyes–and a voice so loud it would point to a hearing deficiency if Eddie didn’t know the guy was in entertainment.

He leans over to his companion.  “Who’s that over there?”

“Uh,” she tilts her head, flipping through some mental rolodex, not unlike a schoolgirl trying to recall the elements of the periodic table.  Her eyes brighten when she lands on the name.  “Richie Tozier.”  

Eddie shrugs.   _Never heard of him._

“He’s an up-and-coming comedian,” she continues.  “People keep saying he’s the next George Carlin.  He has this really popular podcast and, uh, he’s supposed to have a breakout role in the next Melissa McCarthy movie.  Really sweet guy.  Can’t really turn it off, though, you know?”

Eddie hums, taking a generous sip of his white wine–then chokes on it, coughing violently.  A delayed reaction.

“ _Whoa_ ,” she says, setting her drink down on a nearby table and settling a hand between his shoulder blades.  

He sucks in air between coughs, reaching for an inhaler that’s no longer there in his pocket, not for a long time.  He gets a flash of Richie, this same man who’s maybe twenty feet away from him, only at thirteen, hair a perpetual mess, eyes huge and concerned behind glasses he’s sure they no longer make, holding said inhaler urgently between his lips.  

As Eddie struggles to recover, waving off his companion’s help, his first instinct is to run; there’s so much about his childhood that he’s forgotten and so much more he’d like to forget.  He doesn’t want to welcome any of those images into his brain, let alone this room.

But just as he turns, gratefully accepting a tall glass of water (with lemon, for some stupid reason) from a server, still sputtering, he finds those same eyes looking warmly down into his own.  Warm with empathy, not with recognition, he realizes, not yet, as he carefully sips the water and eyes Richie’s nice shoes, avoiding his face.  

“And he’s okay!” Richie shouts, less than half the room actually paying attention now.  “Kick save and a beauty!”  His land–large, with long fingers–claps Eddie on the shoulder.  

It’s a  _weird_ , incredibly outdated phrase, just as transportive as everything else, pushing Eddie to finally lock eyes with him, brow furrowed with mild annoyance but mouth curved into a weak, grateful smile.  

Richie straightens to his full height, looking like the air’s been knocked out of him, too.  “Eds…”  The buzz of partygoers around them offers a strange protection, a privacy.  

The sound of that nickname almost brings tears to Eddie’s eyes, which he quickly swallows down.  Eddie’s companion knows instinctively to move away, give them space.

“ _Ho-ly shit._ ”  Richie pulls him into a fierce hug for a split second, then holds him at arm’s length, pushing a hand through Eddie’s floppy hair, then fixing it.  “I’d know that gorgeous face anywhere.”

He’s vamping, Eddie knows, but there’s something about the word “gorgeous” coming out of his mouth–directed at him–that snags on something inside of him.  There’s something off about it.  Or on, maybe.

Eddie takes a long moment to examine his face.  He’s…  _really_  handsome.  “ _You_  look so different.”  He doesn’t, though, not really, the more Eddie looks at him.  The changes are surface: new teeth, maybe, no glasses.  But his eyes are the same.  His ridiculous, infectious laugh.  His lips.

“L.A., she’s a cruel mistress,” Richie says, somewhat bashful, waving a hand in front of his face.  He braces his hands on Eddie’s shoulders.  “Let me get a good look at you.”

As Richie’s eyes examine his features, it hits Eddie like a tidal wave, a rush of memories.

Richie’s childhood bedroom.  WWF wrestling stickers stuck to the side of his desk.   _RT wuz here_  carved crudely into his windowsill, then colored in with blue pen.  Richie would often go over the letters for something to do while they were hanging out there, running a Bic up and down the indentations over and over.  

Watching  _Nightmare on Elm Street_  in someone’s basement–Bill?  Ben?  (Or are those two different people?)–and Richie dropping purple Nerds into his hair until Eddie’d smacked him in the face, hard, making his nose bleed.   _Ow, Eds, what the fuck?_ , he’d groused, horribly awkward in his gangly body as he’d held his palm over his face, though he’d also been laughing hysterically.  They both had.  Richie’d later fashioned a “championship belt” for Eddie out of tin foil.  

Sitting on Richie’s roof, speaking secrets up to the stars.   _I don’t even know what’s real anymore_ , Eddie remembers saying, but he doesn’t remember why.

How infrequently they were alone, just the two of them.  A group of friends closer than family to fill in the blanks, their faces blurry.

“You finally grew up,” Richie teases, playing with his hair again.  

“Barely,” Eddie says, referring to his five-foot-six frame.  “You didn’t stop, apparently.  Jerk.”  He shoves Richie, feeling adolescent and stupid.

In forty-seven minutes, the ball will be dropping.

He wonders what memory Richie’s thinking of when he says, “Want to get out of here?  There’s a diner up the street.”  Something crucial has been sapped from Richie now that they’re together, Eddie notices, his voice quieter, though there’s still a touch of that frenetic energy under his skin.

“There’s diners everywhere, weirdo.  It’s Manhattan.”  Richie looks at him expectantly.  He nods, a little breathless.  “Yeah, let’s do it.”

 

The diner is kitschy, which Richie clearly approves of from the look on his face, and predictably deserted.  It’s just late enough for the two of them to have missed dinner hour and still too early for the end-of-the-night piss drunk crowd.  The waitstaff stand around idly, bored and clearly somewhat annoyed to be there on New Year’s Eve, waiting for the inevitable rush to come in just a few short hours.  They’re probably aspiring actors, Eddie realizes; Richie keeps looking at them with a fond mixture of recognition, nostalgia, and just a little pity.  If they recognize him, they certainly don’t let on.

Eddie keeps looking at Richie.  He can’t stop.  He suspects he spent a hell of a lot more time doing that when they were kids than he ever realized.

After they order, they engage in about ten minutes of catching up on the last twenty-odd years of each other’s lives.  It feels stilted and not nearly enough, not what either of them wants to be talking about.  In fact, Eddie would be glad to ignore the present of his life completely and just reminisce.  While he has no interest in going back to his childhood, he misses the possibility in it.

Neither of them is married, Richie divorced–twice, no less–and not crazy about either of his ex-wives from the sounds of it, not even before they’d gotten married.  “My first wife saw all this potential in me and didn’t realize the road to success would be longer than she’d banked on… and my second, well, she came after the success.”

“…Gold digger?” Eddie says, teasing.

“Fame digger, if anything.  She set herself up for disappointment there, too,” he explains, “as most people still don’t know who the hell I am.”

“Not for long, from what I hear.”  Eddie nudges his foot under the table.

“I wouldn’t hold my breath.  I’ve been around too long to still have stars in my eyes, Spaghetti Man.”  Richie shoots him a wink over his coffee.

Eddie drops his fork loudly, and they both stare at each other, the nickname uncovering a world of memories, at least for Eddie.

“Holy shitballs,” Richie says, clutching the sides of his head with a breathless smile.  He snaps his fingers.  “That just came out, I wasn’t even thinking.  Where did that come from?”

“Same place we did.”

The clock strikes midnight while they’re mid-meal, the waitstaff leading everyone in a totally put-upon countdown of ten to one, the manager flickering the overhead lights as the city verges on an ecstatic explosion just outside, the few other patrons at neighboring tables clapping halfheartedly.  Eddie looks at Richie sitting across the table from him, mouth stuffed with almost half a strawberry waffle, and feels a horrible domestic affection for him.

 

Richie insists on a nightcap in his hotel room, just a few blocks away–though the journey there is speckled with hordes of drunk, giddy people of all stripes and takes way longer than it should, despite Richie forcibly threading Eddie through the crowd by his hand, clutched tightly in his own, big, warm, and masculine.  

“Why the hell are you staying in midtown on New Year’s?!” Eddie shouts over the din, the faces and the lights whizzing past him as Richie pulls him along.

“Where the hell else would I stay?!”  Richie tosses a mischievous smile over his shoulder, and Eddie’s stomach flips.

The whole thing is absurd, especially considering  _he’s_  the New Yorker here.  But it somehow feels right.

 

The minute the door closes behind them, Richie takes on a different aura entirely, to Eddie.  His face is tired, serious as he shrugs off his jacket, rolls up his sleeves, and unclasps his big wristwatch, depositing it on the dresser.  Eddie watches his hands and can’t help thinking of his father, how big he seemed when Eddie came up no higher than his knee.  His own hands will never look like that.  He’ll never be that big.  

Eddie drops onto the end of the bed, leaning back on his elbows.

“So,” Richie starts grandly, twisting off the cap of a small bottle of white wine for Eddie and pouring him a generous glass.  “Marriage never got you, huh, Eds?”

“Uh,” Eddie smiles coyly as he accepts the wine glass.  “Kind of an impossibility, Rich.  Actually, that’s not true; not anymore.”  He waits for Richie to fix his own drink before taking a sip.  “I keep forgetting it’s legal here now.”

Richie looks at him, his eyes warmer than the glass of whiskey he’s holding.  “ _…Oh._   That sounds right to me, from what little I remember.”  He raises the glass with a wink.  “Cheers to that.”

The desk chair creaks under his weight as he drops into it, propping his legs up on the end of the mattress right next to Eddie’s thigh, toes wiggling in his dress socks.  They drink and reminisce, only the good stuff coming up, though there’s an awareness of something deep, dark, and fuzzy underneath it all, not just for the two of them but the other kids they used to hang around with, too.  ( _Seven_ , Richie had said at the diner.   _The number seven keeps coming up_ , his fingers flickering next to his ear in an imitation of what his brain was doing.)

Richie is so different from when they were kids–they both are, at least on the surface–and yet, there are sharp, crystal clear flashes of that thirteen year-old trashmouth when Richie makes a joke or his eyes light up when Eddie laughs.  He’s very attractive, the kind of guy that Eddie would look at twice on the street, and he’s also one of a very select few who live in Eddie’s heart.  It’s an overwhelming combination.

Eventually, Richie heaves himself up off the chair, makes himself another drink, and shuffles over to the head of the bed, quickly muttering, “That thing is hell on my lower back.”

Eddie isn’t sure how to proceed for only a split second–because Richie only lets a split second go by before he’s beckoning him to “scoot back, join the rest of the party.”  Eddie does, folding his body over and propping his elbows on his knees.  

One of Richie’s strong hands is immediately in his hair.  “This is new.”

“My mom forced the same stupid haircut on me until I was seventeen,” Eddie defends.  “I like it long.”

“God, your  _mom_ ,” Richie says with an amused huff, keeping his hand right where it is.  “I like it, too, Eds.  I like it a whole lot.”  

His thumb–long and sure–drifts down to Eddie’s cheekbone, and Eddie’s mouth goes dry.  “Rich, are you…?”  He gives him a nervous smile.  “I thought–.”

“There is a such thing as liking both, my darling.”

“That sounds right to me, from what little I remember.”

There’s a rational part of Eddie’s brain telling him he should really pump the brakes, tell Richie he  _really should be going but it was great to see you and let’s exchange numbers_ , except the rest of his body is way louder, and it’s shouting  _welcome home, welcome home, welcome home_.  Richie’s leaning closer, and if there were anything scary about that, Richie tempers it by giving Eddie a sweet, disarming smile that shoots him straight through with warmth.  Eddie lets his hand slip under Richie’s collar, finding the cool skin of his clavicle as their lips come together.  

In less than three minutes, they’ll be twined together, something way bigger than Richie’s convincing mouth encouraging Eddie into his lap and then onto his back, the both of them whispering memories into each other’s skin.  

In four years, seven months, and thirteen days, they’ll both get a call from Mike Hanlon.


End file.
